Friday, December 14, 2012

Hosting IPCC 5AR Second Order Drafts

The IPCC 5th Assessment Report Second Order Drafts were leaked yesterday, and are available at this site. I've put them here (as an RAR file) with the ZOD and FOD documents that were leaked earlier.

As I stated with the FODs, I believe these documents are of important public and journalistic interest, and publishing them is protected by the U.S. First Amendment. The IPCC's "Principles Governing IPCC Work" says

"2. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."

Just to be clear, I certainly do not agree with the leaker, Alec Rawls, about any notions of "green suicide." On the contrary, I think manmade climate change is one of the greatest problems humanity faces, which is why I think scientific openness is so important.

If the draft report is correct and co2 risk to the environment is not as great as previously assumed this should be great news to environmentalists. Co2 emissions are going to continue to rise due to the economic damage associated with controlling them. Therefore we can all breath a little easier now. The world as we know it is not going to end due to increasing co2 emissions.

"Your use of the phrase "previously assumed" is incorrect -- this is science, not assumptions."

Actually science has always just been assumptions that are used until we find better more accurate assumptions that better preduct observed observations.

NewtonianMaxwellianEisteinianString Theory?

Each previous set of models/assumptions were displaced over time by models that matched the observation better.

"What makes you think the report shows CO2's risk is not as great as previously calculated?"

Admission that models have not done a good job of predicting temp trends and a incomplete understanding of solar forcing may be part of the explanation.

Would you be happy or sad if it turned out co2 was not really as big a problem as many previously thought?

Do you agree that it's pretty obvious that co2 is not going to be contained anytime soon? I think you recently posted on that reality that co2 was not going to be contained until there were cheaper alternatives to FF.

2)Compared to the First Order Draft, the SOD now adds the following sentence, indicated in bold (page 7-43, lines 1-5, emphasis added):

Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol and cloud properties.

Even if temperatures track just above the -1 sigma line, as they have been, global temperatures would be 1.2 C above 1985 levels by 2050 (SOD Ch11 Fig 11.33). Over land they would be about 1.5 times higher, or 3 F warmer than 1985. And there would be at least 2 F more committed warming. That is an enormous amount of climate change.

Thanks for making these available in a relative safe environment (take that as a sign of some trust). I'll assume you have checked these for trojans and other malware that might be present because they are not officially released. I might take a copy to see how downplayed the draft of the report is this time.

If you believe SKS there is a beautiful bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you for a very reasonable price.

Two years ago the SKS charlatans imposed censorship because their dogma was no match for arguments based on observations. Today, SKS is just another juvenile echo chamber. Check out the decline in their Alexa ranking since censorship was imposed.

The GCR mechanism is a hypothesis. Few people take it seriously even though it provides a physical mechanism to explain the strong correlation between solar activity and temperature since the Maunder Minimum. At ~0.7 that correlation is far better than anything achieved by the IPCC's models.

Even the latest IPCC models (CMIP5) can't produce a convincing "Backcast" even though they know what the answer should be.

In the AR5 WG1 SODs the IPCC is saying that the temperature in 2100 will rise 4K if emissions continue to rise and 1K with "Falling Emissions". Why would anyone believe long term forecasts from folks who can't make decent backcasts?

You have to admire the IPCC's chutzpah when they recommend trashing the global economy to solve the non-problem they used to call CAGW.

Nations that cling to Kyoto style emissions reductions will put themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Fortunately, the USA is not likely to join the Kyoto lemmings.